Analysis paralysis, grass is greener syndrome, longing for the road not traveled: How the success of the women’s movement has left us stumped in the face of limitless options — and how to get over it.

Midlife Crisis, For Her

The other day, I got an interesting email from a good friend of mine. She was walking home from work, she said, having what she referred to as a “low self-esteem day,” when she came upon a big sign in a storefront, picturing three smiling (appropriately diverse, yet all perfectly coiffed) women, “around our age,” her email said (read: early-to-mid 30s), looking happy, healthy, content. “And I just thought to myself I bet they all have kids.” This particular friend doesn’t even want to have children–an assertion she reiterated in her email–but that didn’t stop the tears. “I just feel like life is passing me by,” she wrote.

(For the record, this friend is amazing and wildly enviable in her own right. She’s lived all over the world, and is successful, beautiful, talented, happily married.)

I am a 30 year old mother of two who has definately suffered from the “grass is greener” syndrome. After my daughter was born, I chose to stay at home with my children while pursuing an education. I not only became extreamely depressed, because I felt that I should be “doing it all” (work, school, housewifing, and mothering), but I percieved critism from other women for my choice. I felt like I was worthless. I did not appreciate my life and the wonderfull oppurtunity that I had to be with my children. I was more concerned with what I thought I should be doing, then with what I had chosen to do. I felt that there was something wrong with me, because I could not be the “supermom” (al a Claire Huxtable) that is portrayed on television as the epitome of womanhood. When I finally decided that I needed a job, I spent the whole time that I was at work wishing that I was at home with my kids.

They’re familiar feelings, even for those of us who, outwardly, do seem to have it all. And yet, I think, for women, the whole “life is passing me by” thing is somewhat new. (For men, the story’s so old, there’s an archetype: divorce, young girlfriend, Corvette. Even, for some, toupee. Cringe.) Aging, of course, is as old as time. But, as my friend and I talked it out later–over wine, naturally–we determined that this particular brand of angst has less to do with aging per se than it does with the idea that, as time goes by, what once looked like a wide-open wonderland bursting with possibility and open doors starts looking more and more like a collage of What You’re Missing Out On. That, with every choice we make, we shut those other doors for good, one by painful one. It’s that evil ‘opportunity cost‘ thing, come home to roost. And there’s no model for how to deal with our feelings over what we’re leaving behind Doors Number Two through Infinity (after all, if we can ‘do anything,’ the possibilities are literally infinite, right?).

We want to travel, but can’t take off whenever we feel like it if we’re also going to get our business off the ground–and featured on Oprah. We want a family, but that’d mean that packing up and moving to Cairo or New Orleans on a whim is pretty much off the table. We want to be there for our daughter’s every milestone, yet we also want to model what a successful career woman looks like. We want torrid affairs and hot sex, but where would that leave our husbands? We want financial security and a latte on our way to the office every morning, but sit in our ergonomically correct chairs daydreaming about trekking through Cambodia with nothing but our camera and mosquito net. We want to be an artist, but have gotten rather used to that roof over our heads. We want to be ourselves, fully and completely, but would like to fit in at cocktail parties, too. (And when on earth are we going to find the time to write our novel??)

And it can’t help that women are so often subject to the Either-Or treatment. You can be a Madonna or a whore, a Peggy or a Joan, or as The Guardian argued yesterday, a Jen or a Cameron. By virtue of being one, we necessarily are not the other–have we absorbed this paradigm to the point that its extension holds sway as well? Do we believe that it’s necessarily mother or CEO? traveler or wife? artist or president of the PTA? (And, if this either-orism is but an illusion, is it possible that all those closed doors we’re so busy pining over might in fact be unlocked?)

And make no mistake, we know how lucky we are. We’ve been reminded regularly, since we were sporting pigtails and must-see TV was 3-2-1- Contact: You girls today are so lucky, you can be anything you want! And don’t forget that we came of age during the Have it All era–another swell idea in theory. But I think those sentiments–constructed though they were to be capital-E-Empowering!–often play out to look a little more like capital-D-Disappointing. Like fear that the path we’ve picked isn’t good enough, or that we missed our calling along the way, or that we’ll never get to do all the things we can do, or that because we can do it all, we should. And the real stink of it is that all this fixating on what we’re not doing makes us that much less able to enjoy what it is we are doing. Knowing we can do anything, trying to have it all… it kind of makes me wonder, have we all just been set up?

At some point, people have to grow up and realize that the TWENTIES are the time to try out new identities such as career changes and traveling-the-world without a care etc., and then once you turn 30 it’s time to face the music.
At some point it really DOES become “too late for a new beginning”, and until humans gain an ability to live 9 lives, we have to accept that some doors will have to be closed forever because there is just no time left. It’s true that life does pass you by, we are on this earth for only a blink of an eye.

During my 20s I lived in various cities (Chicago, Houston, Washington D.C.) and traveled to nearly 30 countries, and I shopped like mad following all the latest fashions and explored various “career ideas”, job-hopping every couple of years. I DID pay a price for my youthful restlessness, for example professionally I’m at the level of people who are nearly a decade younger than I am, and my salary level is far beneath other 30-something professionals who did the “straight-line-career-track” direct out of college. Still, those freeliving years of my 20s were absolutely essential for me to have lifelong satisfaction and no regrets, and I wish more women could really use their twenties to explore these different lifestyles/identities so that they wouldn’t suffer from “the grass is greener” syndrome.

Everybody would love to live forever, everybody laments growing older, but being a Grown-Up means you don’t cry over things you can’t change, you make the best of it. Women can’t change the fact that our Fertility is limited, and the fact that we’re eventually going to die, and NO we can’t all “be anything you want”. That sucks, but that’s life, and it’s pointless to cry over the facts of life.

I have to disagree with Crystal. I just turned 30, and I find it depressing to think that just because I reached a certain age, whatever i happen to be doing right now, is what i’m gonna do for the rest of my life.

I am an attorney and my twenties were spent by a mixture of going to school, traveling, working, and most recently 2000 miles away from home doing field work for the Obama campaign with a bunch of 19-22 year olds, and now I am back to working as an attorney.

I don’t do things to get them out of my system because I’ll have to stop one day, once I turn X age or once I have kids, I do them because the opportunities arise and if I can make them fit into my life, I do. I don’t see why that has to change once I turn a certain age or have children.

I think a lot of the reason people are afraid to have kids or wait so long to do it, is this notion that once you have kids, you have to stop doing anything that you ever wanted to do for yourself.

I, for one, have no intention of throwing in the towel on living life now, when I have children, or ever.

[…] Midlife Crisis, For Her clearly touched a chord: At some point, people have to grow up and realize that the TWENTIES are the time to try out new identities such as career changes and traveling-the-world without a care etc., and then once you turn 30 it’s time to face the music. At some point it really DOES become “too late for a new beginning”, and until humans gain an ability to live 9 lives, we have to accept that some doors will have to be closed forever because there is just no time left. It’s true that life does pass you by, we are on this earth for only a blink of an eye. During my 20s I lived in various cities (Chicago, Houston, Washington D.C.) and traveled to nearly 30 countries, and I shopped like mad following all the latest fashions and explored various “career ideas”, job-hopping every couple of years. I DID pay a price for my youthful restlessness, for example professionally I’m at the level of people who are nearly a decade younger than I am, and my salary level is far beneath other 30-something professionals who did the “straight-line-career-track” direct out of college. Still, those freeliving years of my 20s were absolutely essential for me to have lifelong satisfaction and no regrets, and I wish more women could really use their twenties to explore these different lifestyles/identities so that they wouldn’t suffer from “the grass is greener” syndrome. Everybody would love to live forever, everybody laments growing older, but being a Grown-Up means you don’t cry over things you can’t change, you make the best of it. Women can’t change the fact that our Fertility is limited, and the fact that we’re eventually going to die, and NO we can’t all “be anything you want”. That sucks, but that’s life, and it’s pointless to cry over the facts of life. — Crystal […]

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